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Online Betting Financial Strategies

Being a successful bettor isn’t just about employing the best football betting strategy, or the best horse racing betting strategies. If you want to make the most of your money, you have to understand your bankroll – and understand the best betting financial strategies. Here is our WSB guide to help you on your way.

Why Employ Betting Financial Strategies?

If you want to up your chances of increasing your bankroll when betting and not leaving it all to chance, then it is wise to employ the correct betting money strategy for you. There are all sorts of different financial betting strategies available for all the different types of sports, every one of the with different claims of helping you to successfully increase your winning chances by placing the right bets, at the right time, on the right markets.

However, when it comes to betting money strategies, it’s completely universal. Regardless of what sport you wish to bet on and when you wish to bet on it, these are different strategies that you can employ to get what you want out of your wagers. Some are much more successful than others and many depend on the amount of risk you’re prepared to take compared to the amount of pay-out you want to get. Here are the most common and popular betting money strategies out there at the moment.

Bet Everything Every Time

Warning – this is only for the brave – and those that don’t care if they’re out after the first bet. This is clearly the riskiest of all the strategies, but along with that, it also offers the greatest rewards. In gambling, as in life, the bigger the risk, the bigger the pay off. This method is simple. You pick your bet and just put all of your bankroll on it. This can end up either winning you a fortune or bombing out completely. The chance of lasting long with this method is extremely low, but should you manage to do so – and have that lucky winning streak, then you’re in for a very big payday.

The Martingale Strategy

This one is so smart and so complex, the inventor of this strategy bestowed it with his very own name. Does it deserve it though? Well that’s questionable. The idea behind the Martingale strategy is that you double your wager after every loss. This means that the first win that you hit – which should come eventually – will cover everything that you have previously lost, plus whatever you would have win from your first bet. Therefore, eventually, you will end up with a profit because at some point you’re going to win. So it’s pretty much guaranteed if you keep on betting right?

Well, that’s the good part. The downside to this is that you need to have a pretty hefty bankroll to start off with to make this work. If you hit a long streak of losses, then you’ll end up betting huge sums of money to recoup the losses and if you don’t have the funds to cover that, then you could find yourself in financial difficulties. This is great for those with virtually unlimited bankroll funds, but for those who don’t have that luxury, it’s another risky strategy.

The Fibonacci Strategy

Well, this is like the Martingale Strategy for the more cautious. Which is probably not a bad thing if you’re funds aren’t unlimited. With this strategy, your bets will increase after each loss, but not at the same rate. You will not be doubling your wager each time, but increasing it by the Fibonacci sequence, which is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 etc… each increasing by the previous 2 figures added together.

Like the Martingale, if you do suffer a long streak of losses, the stakes get much higher, but not as much as the Martingale – which would effectively be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256… much higher figures comparatively. Therefore, although this could see you out of bankroll if a win doesn’t come in quickly enough, you’ll have more time than with the Martingale strategy. On the other hand, this will also reduce your winning rate as well – so again. Less risk but less pay out.

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Fixed Betting

This does pretty much what is says on the tin. You simply bet the same amount on every bet. How brave you are then is completely up to you. You can decide whether it is a small fixed bet or a large fixed bet. This strategy is a steady strategy as it ensures that you won’t lose your entire balance quickly – it will decrease or increase at a steady rate.

On the flip side, you aren’t guaranteed to recoup your losses unless you eventually get more wins than losses. With the Martingale strategy just one win will see you in profit; with this strategy you need more wins than losses to see a return. It’s obviously less risky, but in the long run it’s trickier to get a good profit.

Proportional Betting

Proportional betting is a very popular method as it pretty much means you’ll never completely be out of funds – as each time you bet, you’re betting a fixed percentage of your bankroll. However, although you can never be completely out of funds, it doesn’t mean you won’t be low on funds soon. Even if you were to bet as little as 5% of your bankroll consistently – and lost consistently, you could still get down very low – even if you don’t lose everything altogether.

If you had £100 to start with and you decided on a fixed percentage of 10%, then you’d bet £10… if you won and your bankroll went up to £120, you’d then bet £12 on your next wager. Conversely, if you lost and your bankroll was down to £90, then you’d bet just £9 on your next stake.

The benefits of this are clear – it’s impossible to lose your entire stake – although if you get down to your last £1, good luck making a 10p bet. However, winnings will take time as well and recouping losses on a percentage strategy will take a while too.

Proportional Betting with Odds

This is just like the proportional strategy, but this time you’re taking the odds of success into consideration. So, if you are betting 10% of your £100 on an evens bet then you’d bet that £10 – no more no less. The way you work it out is this:

Your standard percent (10% of £100) divided by the odds -1…

In this case it would be £10 / 2-1

£10 / 1 + £10

However, if you decided to bet on an outsider with odds of 11, then your bet would be greatly different …

£10 / 11-1 = £10/10 + £1- you would bet just £10

Conversely – if you bet on the odds in favourite, then this method would see you betting virtually your entire bankroll on that one bet. This is a great strategy for betting on the outsiders, but quite a risky one if you’re going for a favourite – as they don’ always come in!

The Kelly Criterion Strategy

This strategy has been doing the rounds since the 1950s, so it’s obviously getting something right. This strategy involves understanding the probability of success and the odds offered on the success. It is rather complicated, as you must work out the value of the bet, which is essentially what this strategy relies on. Working out the value of a bet is simply multiplying the % chance of winning as a decimal value) by decimal odds minus 1, subtract minus by the probability of losing and divide by the odds minus 1.

So, an example of this would be: you think that the chances of Chelsea beating Arsenal are 55%, and you are being offered decimal odds of 1.91 then you’d work out the value as follows:

(0.55 x 0.91 – 0.45)/ 0.91

(0.5005 – 0.45)/ 0.91

0.0505/0.91 + 0.055

Using this method, it is recommended that you should then bet 5.5% of your bankroll on this wager. This is great for one game, but if you want to make a few bets at once, your bankroll will come under heavy attack. Another issue is that you have to know enough about the bet to be able to correctly predict the probability of winning. If this is out, then the whole strategy is out.

If you want to try the method, then a less risky way of doing it is to apply the half of Kelly or Quarter of Kelly strategy, which involves betting either a half or a quarter of what the Kelly Criterion suggests.

Our Verdict

Well, there’s so many to choose from and the method you choose really depends on your aversion to risk and the bankroll you have. If you are lucky enough to have an unlimited – or very hefty bankroll, then Martingale is great because eventually you will make a profit. However, if you aren’t that lucky then proportional betting is a good option because you are never going to go bankrupt and you won’t end up chasing losses either. It won’t pay out as much as riskier strategies, but it is a safer bet than many of the others. However, if you know your way around your betting, then the Kelly Criterion strategy has a lot going for it, but we’d recommend that more for the professionals.

Whatever strategy you use, make sure you have your betting bankroll and stick with it. Take a fixed amount of money that you are prepared to risk and go no further. It is important that you don’t start chasing those losses by topping that up with other funds, as this will never end up profitable. Bet rationally, be prepared to win some and be prepared to lose some – that’s what gambling is about. Enjoy it and enjoy it safely and sensibly.